


Accept

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Acceptance, Gen, Introspection, Loneliness, Moving On, One Shot, Prompt Fic, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong> Accept: to accommodate or reconcile oneself to </strong>
</p>
<p>Sometimes, the only thing you can do when it rains is to let it rain. Occasionally, however, there's a price to this acceptance.</p>
<p>They all eventually learnt that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accept

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
>  
> 
> _“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”_
> 
> **Henry Wadsworth Longfellow**

**your place in the world**

The letter was sealed with a steady hand and placed carefully on his desk, parallel to the edge and pleasingly centred. A concession to who he knew would find it. The one person he knew would come looking, hurt the most by this abandonment.

But he still couldn’t say.

He said goodbye to his team and his life and his job, and he said goodbye to Jason Gideon as well. The man who was leaving this cabin tonight, chased away by Sarah and Frank and the ghosts of everyone he’d ever failed, was not the same man who’d worn that name. He accepted that. Eventually, Spencer would accept that too.

And it was time to go.

He stepped out into the rain and left himself behind.

 

**the passage of time**

It took him a moment to process the two standing by Jack’s car, their forms distorted by rivulets of rain on the window. The summer deluge left their hair flat against their heads and clothes plastered to their bodies, making unfamiliar shapes of the familiar forms.

Hotch blinked and ducked back behind the curtain, a smile twitching the side of his mouth and almost ashamed to have intruded on this moment. Jack, grinning wildly with the exuberance and brashness of youth, and the girl in his arms looking at him like there was no other and never would be. There would be others, for them both, but in that moment, they were blissfully unaware that this rain would ever end. A far cry from the toddling baby that had struggled to form words without a lisp, or the shy child who’d thought his dad was the greatest and only hero in the world.

Hotch leaned against the wall in the living room and considered that maybe his little boy had gone and grown up without even waiting for Hotch to be ready for his childhood to end. He also considered that maybe he didn’t mind so much. After it, wasn’t it the father’s duty to accept that their children would one day cease to be solely their own?

He left them to their fleeting infiniteness and reached for a familiar book on the shelf. Within minutes, immersed in memories and long-forgotten words from a long-forgotten play. Haley smiled up at him from the yearbook pages, her eyes almost obscured by the pirate hat perched crookedly on blonde hair.

She’d be proud of the path they’d taken.

 

**your family’s limits**

“My son used to visit me, you know,” Diana said mournfully, gazing at him with so much lost hopelessness that it felt like a physical blow to his chest. “But he’s gone now. They’ve taken him away and he can’t find his way home.”

He didn’t argue with her. He knew there was no point.

He’d had this argument before.

“Wherever he is,” Reid said quietly, taking her dry hand in his own and squeezing gently, “just remember that he loves you very much. And he always will.”

She didn’t pull her hand away, but her eyes flashed with a familiar anger that was out of place on her unfamiliar wasted features. “I know that,” she snapped, looking away. “You don’t need to tell me that. How could I forget?”

She could. And she would. And he’d patiently continue reminding her, until the day came that she was beyond needing to be reminded any more. A part of family was the moment of accepting that even parents had their limits, and he was constantly finding hers; had been since the moment his father had left them Maybe even before, when her mind had turned on her like a starved animal lashing out at the closest vulnerable being.

It was the one thing he couldn’t save her from. Couldn’t save anyone from, no matter how hard he worked. They only ever arrived after the crime had been committed.

“I miss you,” he said finally, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the wall behind him. Outside, it drizzled weakly, a misting kind of rain. Rare for Vegas at this time of the year. He couldn’t appreciate its scarcity.

“But I’m right here,” she responded, her voice tight with confusion. “I haven’t gone anywhere, doctor.”

But she had.

 

**your breaking point**

She had thought that Spence showing up nightly would soon become tiring, but three weeks after they’d pretended to bury Emily Prentiss, his knock didn’t come. And it wasn’t tiring, not at all.

It was terrifying.

She ate her tea in silence and the doorway was silent. She kissed Henry goodnight and still the front door stayed closed. So she picked up her keys and said, ‘I’m going for a drive’. There was no need to say where. Will knew where she was going. Their couch was empty and Spence wasn’t there and she was ashamed that she had ever thought it could be tiring.

Two steps out of that silent door and she saw his car and the dark shape bowed in the front seat. His head was slumped against the steering wheel, and the sight froze the world around her. A wavering form broken by the steady glide of raindrops on the window between them. The rain slowed to a halting stop, leaving the world clean and new and, still, haunted. She could cry out, call for him, call for Will, but she did none of those things, and most of all she didn’t think.

She walked slowly towards the car, feet swishing on rain-damp grass and mouth sour with the aftertaste of a dinner she couldn’t remember eating. Absolutely expecting the worst because that way it couldn’t break her. She could accept it easier that way.

_He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, I didn’t even notice that he needed me and now he’s dead and_

Manicured nails that she felt silly for paying seventeen dollars for when he’d needed her clicked on the glass. She rapped sharply on the pane, her heart jerking with him as he jolted upright and looked at her with her with grieving eyes. Alive. Breaking. Broken. But alive.

Breaking was okay. She could fix breaking.

He rolled the window down and tried to grin sheepishly at her but the expression slipped off his face, and he was itching absently at the crook of his arm hard enough that the thin fabric of his shirt was spotted with blood.

“Have you eaten?” she asked those spots of rust-red breaking, and he shrugged. “Come on.”

He followed her silently up the path to her home, and she thought that maybe this was her penance. Her lie to keep Emily alive had shattered those who loved her. Now she had to put them back together so that when Emily returned, she wouldn’t be able to see the cracks.

Even without Emily, they were still a family. And she wouldn’t let him fall.

 

**your breaking point**

She woke up alone with a burning gut as though Doyle had shoved a red-hot poker in there instead of half a fucking tree. Slickly coated pills left her mouth bitter and gut churning, keeping the pain at bay, but they didn’t diminish the loneliness. Bruises faded on the face that stared back alone at her from the mirror. She opened a window to let in a breeze that was thick with the promise of rain, but there was no one to share that promise with. The people who had could have helped had buried Emily Prentiss in the hard ground of DC, under a headstone etched with lies and betrayal. She’d buried six, metaphorically of course, in the graveyard of her memories and her heart.

What they didn’t know, and what she was just realizing, was that Emily Prentiss hadn’t died on that operating table. Emily Prentiss was still dying, slowly fading, piece by piece in solitude and miles away from everyone who had ever thought to care about her.

If they accepted her death as an absolute, then was she really still alive?

In the long hours between the sun rising and setting on the endless days of her exile she thought of many things. She wondered who had Sergio. She wondered if Reid was okay. She considered the many names she’d worn throughout her life and how each of them had ended in blood and undeserved grief.

She considered her breaking point. She stood with her toes kissing the line.

Alone. Always alone.

Her laptop dinged, the only noise to break the unbroken silence of her apartment.

**_One new word played_ **

**_Cheeto_Breath played_ ** **ACCEPT _for_ 15 points**

She stepped back.

Emily Prentiss wasn’t done living yet.

 

**your family’s limits**

Her doorbell rung and she almost dropped the carton of milk she was holding, hands suddenly damp with sweat and heart hammering against her ribcage. Panicked, swooping, choking fear; it clouded her and, for a beat, became her everything.

Her phone dinged. One message.

**From: Chocolate Thunder**

**Yo Babygirl, let me in. It’s raining out here and I bring gifts.**

_Derek_.

She walked to the door on legs that wobbled and considered that maybe, just maybe, she was going a little insane. That guy, that _monster_ , had taken all her sanity and her trust and broke it as easily as his bullet had broken her skin and left her frightened within own damn home. When work, with the ick and the gross and the evil that it threw at her daily, had started feeling safer than her apartment, she’d known she was in trouble.

“Hi,” she said simply when she opened the door and found him standing there, shoulders patterned with dark dots of rain. He examined her carefully with the scary profiling gaze that they all had, even little Reid, and she tried to shrink away from it. “Is the gift you?”

Terrible. Terrible weak attempt at banter, and he saw through it as easily as he would a pane of glass.

“I’m staying over tonight,” he said, smiling at her, and her heart skipped a beat. “And I’m gonna stay over for as long as it takes for you to admit that it’s okay to ask for help, my gorgeous girl.”

“I don’t need help,” she lied. Her chest ached around the still healing wound.

“And that,” he said, moving past her carefully. “Is the kinda stupid talking that’s going to have me sleeping on your couch until we’re both old and grey.”

She didn’t argue with him, just closed the door and put the bolt on, trying not to cry as she realized: it was okay that Colby had left her a little broken and a little mad and a lot frightened. She could accept that.

Because she wasn’t alone.

And with her family, she never would be.

 

**the passage of time**

They buried his dad on a Thursday.

Derek had never liked Thursdays before because it was the health day in the school cafeteria and they only gave out broccoli and soggy cheese sandwiches with the crusts still on. This particular Thursday was worse because it was soggy and grey and rain loomed overhead in dark clouds that never actually broke. They buried his dad on this Thursday and Derek watched the coffin disappear into the dark earth and silently considered that things like that didn’t really matter anymore. His mom stood alone and his sisters stood apart and the only man that was there for them was him. He couldn’t be a kid anymore.

And he had to accept that.

He squared his shoulders as the earth pattered against the wood. The rain began, finally breaking the tension and the humidity of the air that was trying to smother him.

He’d always hated Thursdays.

 

**your place in the world**

“Want to share a cab?” Hotch was sporting a rare smile, putting his empty glass gently onto the bar and standing without a hint of the alcohol he’d consumed in his stance. “It’s wet out there.”

“Some profiler,” Rossi teased, reaching for his coat. “Scared by a bit of rain.” Hotch laughed as they made their way to the exit, shoulders for once light without the weight of their work pressing down on them. The rest of the team waved, animated with the freedom the night offered them, together and unbroken. Reid with his quick smile and quicker hands, trying to teach JJ coin tricks with fingers that didn’t fumble no matter how many drinks Morgan pressed on him. Morgan himself, letting his playful side show and finally relaxing around the intimidating presence of their newest member. The women, JJ and Emily, both watching him warily, both smiling warmly. Rossi said his goodbyes to them and they said them back, Garcia wrapping him in a forceful hug that smelled of cinnamon and dust and the faintest hint of alcohol.

“They like you, you know,” Hotch reassured him on the way out as they skirted puddles. “I told you they’d accept you.”

“What, as part of the team?” Rossi asked, looking around for the cab they’d called. “Hell, Aaron, I’ve been here three months. It’d be a damn shame if they didn’t think me part of the team yet.”

He was walking in Gideon’s shoes and Gideon hadn’t just been part of their team, he’d been a part of their hearts. And Rossi had no illusions about his inability to breech those walls.

“If that’s what you think I meant,” Hotch replied with an indiscernible glance.

Rossi hadn’t had a family for a long time, but he was willing to give it a go. If they’d accept him. He had a feeling they might. “You know they call you mom, right?”

Hotch snorted, oddly undignified as his mouth twitched. “Yeah, but I still wear the pants.”

Maybe they already had.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**


End file.
